4/5 ★ – jake84's review of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

All aboard the hype train! What an amazing installation simulator, was my first thought: "Buy U4, then download the massive 5GB patch, and wait two hours! Reviewers all agree - it's a 10/10!" Easy there, fellas. Once the massive hype hysteria has died down, it's time to realize that A Thief's End is not "the greatest game ever made". It's a good game, might even be a great game, one of 2016's best, but it falls a bit short when it comes to being a satisfying (supposed) conclusion to the Nathan Drake storyline. I honestly prefer Uncharted: Drake's Deception as the proper ending. Dramaturgically, A Thief's End is exciting enough, except for a second flash back to the orphanage storyline, which almost pulls the pace to a complete halt, and the last two chapters feel like the beginning of a fourth act, until the ending... My God, the ending. What a complete cop out of an otherwise exciting premise. A let down. A waste. I felt like being slapped in the face with a dank washcloth, that's how maudlin and sentimental it is. Almost inexcusable. The ending in The Last of Us stuck with me for weeks; this did nothing. Furthermore, this storyline completely negates Nathan's origin story in Drake's Deception where we're told he ends up with Sully in Colombia and is trained by him - in this, he grows up with Sam... I'm sorry, what? You had ONE JOB, Naughty Dog, and you can't even follow your own mythology. This game clearly lacked Amy Hennig, and it's a damn shame she had to leave the project, because with her supervision, it could have ended up being the best Uncharted installment yet. I missed the Uncharted-spark, the feeling of an adventure, the feeling of sweeping action sequences. To be fair, there's one exceptionally good one where you're being dragged after a convoy through the mud, but we've all seen that in the trailer, and I had hoped the game would have been packed with these moments. There's really no "airplane fight meets Lawrence of Arabia"-sequence here, no "capsizing cruise ship", no "fight aboard a train to Nepal" here, no ice cave with Tenzin. I also deeply miss the puzzles that made especially the second and third games so great. There's nothing in U4 even remotely resembling the "The Path of Light"-quest from Among Thieves. Here, they all seem sloppy, lazy and unimaginative. And Sully is completely sidelined. On the plusside, it's the first time the characters drive the plot forward, and not the other way around. I also liked how fleshed out both of the villains were, Nadine and Rafe, and they seemed to have a more believable presence than the previous villains. That is, until the disappointing ending... What happened to Nadine? But, the opening of the game is masterful, and I found myself writing this down on a piece of paper, "Dear Lucas & Spielberg. THIS is how you deconstruct an old adventurer in the fourth chapter." Seeing Drake running around and playing with a toy gun in his attic is one of the most beautiful and saddest things I've ever seen in a video game. And when we first meet Drake in the present day, his day job is played as a clever twist. Don't worry, I won't spoil what it is, but it's really, really well-executed. But there's a problem with grounding a guy like Drake and make him this down to earth, before you send him out on his adventures. It felt really jarring how he's suddenly transformed to a cold blooded special ops killer, mowing down countless enemies once the bullets start flying at a castle in Spain. Is this the same guy we just saw lovingly playing Crash Bandicoot next to his wife, Elena? There's no option to just escape unscathed. No, you have to kill every last guard with a shotgun blast. For the first time in this series, it felt off; there's a cost to humanizing your protagonist like that. The cast is exceptional. You can't really be surprised by how good both Nolan North (Nathan) and Troy Baker (Sam) are at this point in gaming history, but the secret weapon among the cast is actually Emily Rose, who gives her greatest performance yet as Elena Fisher, Nathan's spouse. She finally embodies the character, gets a chance to make her a little more three-dimensional, and she steals every scene she's in. You see, there's is no denying how entertaining this is at times - actually, about 80 percent of the time, which is a really good ratio for an action-adventure game. Hell, despite all its shortcomings it's probably my second favorite in the franchise. I liked the almost Pixies-esque "loud-quiet-loud" build up around the exploration and action sequences; the shootouts are the most functional yet, the grabbling hook adds another dimension to the cinematic fight scenes, and there's no titles on the console marked that can match this game's presentation. It's astounding how well it looks, sounds and runs on the PS4, even taking into account how relatively short the loading times are. It's a technological masterpiece and the best-looking game to date on any console. A shame the story falls flat and feels lazy around the third act. In the end, the game is afraid to do anything of consequence, and that's something I can't get behind. And just prepare yourself for how many think pieces and essays will come out during the next 6 months about reviewers justifying their perfect 10/10-score (perhaps even backtracking a bit), and explaining why they thought the ending was stunning. It's a total cop out. People, if an ending doesn't move you, it's doesn't move you. It's as simple as that. Again, make no mistake, A Thief's End is a great game and it would've been even greater if it hadn't been so quick to emphasize how it's the conclusion to a franchise. Now, more than ever, I really hope it doesn't end here.